From the 1830s to the Civil War, Americans could be found putting each other into trances for fun and profit in parlors, on stage, and in medical consulting rooms. They were performing mesmerism. Surprisingly central to literature and culture of the period, mesmerism embraced a variety of phenomena, including mind control, spirit travel, and clairvoyance. Although it had been debunked by Benjamin Franklin in late eighteenth-century France, the practice nonetheless enjoyed a decades-long resurgence in the United States. Emily Ogden here offers a comprehensive account of those boom years.

Out on credulity! An introduction -- It does not exist: animal magnetism before it was true -- Beyond radical enchantment: mesmerizing laborers in the Americas -- In imagination: traveling clairvoyance and the suspension of disbelief -- Out of character: phrenomesmerism and the secular agent -- The spirit of Benjamin Franklin -- Coda: bagging the idol.